As city archaeologist, Hindes scrutinizes excavations

Updated 2:22 pm, Monday, January 30, 2012

Kay Hindes works behind the scenes to "preserve and protect" in San Antonio.

Kay Hindes works behind the scenes to "preserve and protect" in San Antonio.

Photo: EDWARD A. ORNELAS, SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS

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Kay Hindes works with Kathleen Gilmore at the Fort St. Louis/Presidio del Loreto site along Garcitas Creek in Victoria County.

Kay Hindes works with Kathleen Gilmore at the Fort St. Louis/Presidio del Loreto site along Garcitas Creek in Victoria County.

Photo: Texas Historical Commission

As city archaeologist, Hindes scrutinizes excavations

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Scanning a brushy field near known archaeological sites, Kay Hindes noticed the curled-up rattlesnake. But her heart rate barely picked up. Having grown up in a rural community south of San Antonio, she'd encountered plenty of rattlesnakes.

What got to her was being shot at.

That time, she peered across to the adjacent property, where a “very eccentric” elderly woman stood with a shotgun.

“She didn't want us around the property,” laughs Hindes, recalling the scariest moment in her three decades as an archaeologist.

Hindes isn't usually up against danger. Rather, as San Antonio's city archaeologist, she confronts miles and miles of open land in search of artifacts the size of a quarter. She scrutinizes excavations, standing beside backhoes in her flannel lumberjack shirt and pink hard hat. And she faces developers seeking to, for example, tear down a 150-year-old rock wall or build subdivisions on 19th century farm and ranch complexes with some type of historic value.

In the case of the elderly lady with the shotgun, Hindes was “friendly, jovial Kay.” She knocked on the woman's door and explained what she was doing. Although the work was not technically on the woman's property, Hindes told her she understood.

“I believe in private property rights,” she told her.

After that, the woman stayed inside.

In a city that cherishes its physical connections to the past — and brings in millions of tourism dollars because of them — Hindes works behind the scenes to “preserve and protect.” Her mission varies from day to day. One day she may be cataloging stone tool parts found in Brackenridge Park that date back 10,490 years to when Paleo-Indians made their life here. Another day she may be documenting the history of an 8-foot-tall mesquite gate found on a ranch that may have originally come from the Alamo.

Her job is an uncommon one. Most U.S. cities do not have a city archaeologist. But with San Antonio's rich history and strong preservation ordinance, city officials identified the need. Hindes, and two predecessors, had been doing the work of city archaeologist anyway; she took on the new title in 2008.

Any time there is a city project with possible archaeological implications, such as the renovation of Main Plaza, Hindes will step in.

In 2007, construction workers in the plaza stumbled upon a fortification entrenchment that made Hindes and others giddy. They believed it was dug by Mexican troops in 1835 during the siege of Bexar, the battle that led up to the Alamo. They swung into action, ordering crews to sift through 15 truckloads of dirt. Their hypothesis was confirmed: They uncovered more than 100,000 artifacts, including gun parts, buttons and a gold military insignia.

Without Hindes, the city would have to hire consultants for such projects, studies and analyses.

“The reality is, we documented last year just having Kay involved in city projects saved several hundred thousand dollars,” says Shanon Peterson, historic preservation officer for the city.

“She's a walking encyclopedia of the area,” says Skipper Scott, a regulatory archaeologist for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, based in Fort Worth.

He calls on Hindes whenever the Corps is working on a flood-control project or a river improvement project such as the Museum Reach, requiring Corps involvement due to the Clean Water Act. “She is my fulltime reference in San Antonio,” says Scott, who leads projects all over Texas.

To become that “walking encyclopedia,” the 59-year-old Hindes took a nontraditional path.

Married at 17, she spent her early 20s at home with two young sons in her hometown of Charlotte, population about 1,100. But at age 27, with her younger son in kindergarten, she decided to follow her childhood passion of digging in the dirt.

One of her professors was Tom Hester. He knew the name “Hindes” because he had corresponded for years with Hindes' mother-in-law, Dorothy Lee Hindes, an amateur archaeologist who had amassed a large Indian artifact collection.

Hindes recalls of the influence of her late mother-in-law: “She would take me out on some of her excursions, and she would let me go ‘hunting' with her — hunting for arrowheads. What that did was to really whet my appetite to know more. It wasn't just about that artifact, it was about who made it, how did they live, what was the story behind it.

“It confirmed all those childhood loves and desires. You just want to know more.”

She continued to hone her interest in the early settlement of South Texas.

She is a “very, very good steward” in protecting both prehistoric and Spanish colonial sites in San Antonio, says Harry Shafer, professor emeritus at Texas A&M and a member of the San Antonio Historic and Design Review Commission. “She's not someone that's easily moved off of center. If she feels she's right, she stands her ground. She's a real asset in the job that she does in historic preservation.”

The missions are near to her heart.

Among her favorite projects over the years was finding the “missing mission of Texas.” For nearly 100 years, history buffs had searched for the site of Santa Cruz de San Sabá, a mission that was burned down in 1757 by a coalition of Native American groups. While the mission's short history was well documented, its exact location was unknown.

Until 1993. That's when Hindes, working as a freelance archaeologist, helped coordinate a team using aerial infrared photography over farmland 150 miles northwest of San Antonio, east of Menard. To pinpoint the location, Hindes pored through documents and managed to connect a footnote from a 1905 report to details in deed records. Then, on foot, the team scanned a recently plowed alfalfa field, step-by-step, until Hindes picked up a ceramic fragment with a pale green glaze — that of a Spanish olive jar.

A three-month-long investigation confirmed the find.

“That was a major accomplishment,” Hester says. “It was quite a find in terms of Texas history.”

Another favorite for Hindes was recovering the thousands of artifacts in Main Plaza.

One day while she was working at that site, she got called to appear before the City Council.

“I was muddy. I was dirty. I had my hair in a ponytail,” she says in her characteristic twang. She thought, “Oh my God, I have to go to council like this.”

She was called in because of concern that crews could be disturbing human remains; the city's original Catholic cemetery had been in the vicinity. Hindes provided assurance that in 1806, the remains were exhumed and moved to what is today's Milam Park.

Next up for Hindes? She will oversee excavations in Acequia Park, where crews will be looking for Native American and mission-related artifacts. The UTSA-led effort, under contract with the San Antonio River Authority, is part of the local-federal Mission Reach project to restore native plants and wildlife along an eight-mile stretch of river that connects the four Spanish missions.

It is just the latest example of San Antonio's appreciation of its historic resources.

“That's what San Antonio is all about in a big way — the missions, the acequias, the Alamo, the King William district and all those kinds of places are what bring millions of tourists to San Antonio,” says Mark Denton, an archaeologist with the Texas Historical Commission. He says that Hindes, when facing developers, is never afraid to speak up to ensure that historic preservation is part of the discussion.

“Kay has played a big role in the last 10 years or more in being able to talk one-to-one with developers and get them on board with that concept,” he says.

Hindes helped push through a city ordinance that requires developers to carry out an archaeological survey. If any historically significant sites are found, she can work with the developer to either avoid the site or document it.

“By working with them and facilitating these things, it's a win for us as well,” she says.

Questions from developers are one thing; questions from the general public something else.

The No. 1 question Hindes gets?

“Did you find any gold?”

She has always had to say no. Until the Main Plaza renovation.

Crews found latrines and wells that dated to the 1700s and 1800s. The latrines were chock-full of artifacts. Among them: a perfect gold coin.

The coin is worth around $50,000. A similar one was discovered nearby.

But when it comes to archaeology, finders most definitely are not keepers.